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July 2, 2008
Gavin’s Adventures In Beijing, Day 1 (& 2)
Last week, Microsoft sent me to Beijing (along with my fellow MacBU-er Brooke) on business. Our flight left Seattle on Monday, the 23rd; I got home this morning. This afternoon's been a bit brutal, energy-wise - my internal clock is still 15 hours ahead of Pacific time, so my 8:25 AM landing (it's the morning!) was 11:55 PM to me (it's time for bed!).
The last 10 days have been a total whirlwind. While very much a work trip, we managed to use our weekend stayover for a bit of sightseeing. Very exciting.
As usual, I took a few notes during the trip:
- During my Monday-morning suitcase-stuffing extravaganza, I peek at Dashboard, which says that Beijing has a low of 70 and a high of 95 all week. Yowza. Pack shorts.
- Brooke's wife gave us a lift to the airport, so on the way out of town we stopped by Vivace for one final cup of Seattle coffee. We then popped downtown so I could give Elaine a goodbye hug at her office. Mid-squeeze, I'm reminded of why I was glad when my insane Product Planning travel schedule came to a close last year.
- Since the time difference between Seattle and Beijing is so pronounced, it meant that our Monday afternoon departure wouldn't land in China until late Tuesday night. (Dude, where's my Tuesday?)
- We're on Northwest for this trip, living large in business class (Microsoft travel policy lets you go business if your flight is more than 7 hours). After clearing Seattle airport security, we head to the South terminal and check out the Northwest executive lounge. It's my first time there, and it's pretty excellent: plenty of windows (lots of natural light), tables (places to spread out and work), free soda and coffee, free WiFi, and lots of quiet.
- (Brooke and I are, I think, the most casually-dressed people in the lounge.)
- Business class is addictive: champagne before takeoff, a fresh Wall Street Journal, an appetizer of seared Ahi tuna skewers with ginger and cucumber. We remark to each other, many times, that we are forever ruined when it comes to future travel in coach.
- Northwest's Airbus A330s have AC power outlets in business. My initial feeling of joy ("Score!") gives way to mild annoyance as I realize the flight's AC power system is put together with baling wire and a couple of D batteries. The juice stops frequently, which makes it hard to sustain (or retain) a laptop charge. Our power manages to last the whole flight (and I have an outbox of queued up e-mail to prove it), but things feel very touch-and-go most of the time.
- Our flight connects through Tokyo. I've never been to Japan before, so as we're descending I'm peering out the window of the plane like a 5-year old in front of a toy store, nose pressed against the glass and trying to absorb everything I'm seeing. The country is unbelievably green - they have farms and fields laid out in grids as far as the eye can see, incredibly lush and gorgeous.
- We arrive in Tokyo at 4:15 PM, local time. We are pooped.
- My iPhone can't seem to lock on to a cellular provider in Japan. I had this fantasy that I'd be able to zip around the world and at least have the option of paying $4.99 a minute on foreign networks, but apparently the AT&T people aren't talking to their Japanese counterparts. Grr.
- The Tokyo airport has a McDonald's. Next to a sushi bar. I swear I am not making this up.
- On the flight from Tokyo to Beijing, I watch "Ralph Nader: An Unreasonable Man", which I find to be an insightful and balanced portrait of a very complicated and stubborn guy. It starts with his work in the 1960s and 1970s, and then proceeds up to his 2000 presidential bid. Truthfully, I'd been a bit mad at Nader over 2000, and had seen him as a spoiler for Gore. After the movie ... well, I'm not mad anymore; I think I have a good sense of where he's coming from. I don't necessarily agree with him, but I do think I understand him a bit better. Highly recommended.
- After the film, I manage to sleep for an hour.
- We touch down at 9:28 PM, local time (6:28 AM Pacific).
- Beijing's airport is gigantic, just enormous. It seems to go on forever. We taxi for a full 15 minutes after landing, and never run out of new things to look at - stretches of tarmac and clusters of buildings, going on and on and on.
- The plane's doors pop, and the weather hits us. Beijing feels a lot like Houston - humid and hot, almost menacingly so, as if the weather wants you to know that it can take things from "pretty warm" to "Crock-Pot cooking" whenever it feels like it.
- Inside, the airport looks like any other modern European airport, except with Chinese signage. Most signs and displays have English translations; international pictograms are used for bathrooms, exits, and the like. Navigating is not a problem.
- The Chinese customs people are friendly and polite. They also have a push-button customer-satisfaction poll on the customer's side of the counter; you push the smiley-face or frowny-face that matches your experience ("Very satisfied", "satisfied", "unsatisfied", "Very unsatisfied"). I give my guy a "very satisfied" and head off to get my bag.
- We are met at the airport by some of our fellow Microsofties. They meet us in front of ... the Starbucks. (I am a sad, sad Seattle cliche.)
- A taxi is procured to take us in to Beijing proper, and our hotel. I had been warned about the driving in China, but the reality of it is really quite striking - people change lanes whenever they want, drive at different speeds on the freeway (very fast, very slow), pass on the shoulder, you name it. For all the chaos, the drivers seem acclimated, alert, and ready for anything.
- (Brooke and I are both alarmed to find that our taxi doesn't have seatbelts in the rear seats. As we later learn, virtually none of them do.)
- Our taxi ride takes 45 minutes, and sets us back 75 Yuan. That's about $10 US.
- The hotel is very nice, very clean, and clearly caters to visiting Western businesspeople and tourists.
- After unpacking everything, I notice the small sign in the bathroom - "The tap water is not safe for drinking." The hotel has set out two 12-oz bottles of (privately branded) water for personal use. I'd been warned about the water situation before leaving, but being confronted with it still requires a shift in my thinking. I need to use these two bottles for pretty much everything - drinking, rinsing my toothbrush, taking vitamins, everything. Conserving water becomes something I think about a lot during the trip, and I find myself wondering whether this kind of water rationing is something humanity as a whole is going to have to get used to in the future.
- Slightly before midnight, I bomb out.
(If you're interested, I've posted a number of pictures from the trip to my Flickr Photostream.)
Posted by Gavin Shearer at July 2, 2008 4:47 PM. Posted to MSFT | Travel.
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Ah, yes, the joys of Asia jet lag! I ran into the same thing when work sent me to Taipei for 10 days in May (during the China earthquake, btw, which was quite exciting). I remember VERY well the insane drivers, crazy roads, and the utter incomprehensibility of seeing McDonald's and Starbucks next to street vendors selling deep-fried unidentifiable bits (you didn't eat the stinky tofu, did you?). I lucked out, though, and got direct flights so didn't have to stop anywhere, but I also had the warning in my room about the unsafe drinking water.
Good times! How did you enjoy China? :)
Posted by: Teri at July 3, 2008 9:48 PM
Actually, much of humanity as a whole already is used to water rationing. It's the Euro/American experience where tap water is safe to drink that in anomalous. ;)
20% of the world doesn't have access to safe water for consumption at all (they have to drink contaminated water). Another 40% on top of that have access to safe drinking water, but don't have any water for sanitation (running water for toilets or showers). It's the wealthiest 40% of the world that take clean water for both consumption and sanitation for granted.
Posted by: Khan at July 4, 2008 2:31 AM
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